Are you a pastor? A counselor? Or maybe you have a friend or family member going through a rough season of life, such as depression, death of a loved one, abuse, or serious illness. Knowing what to say or how to respond to those in need is a difficult yet necessary undertaking. The gospel of Jesus offers comfort and encouragement for hard times, and we are proud to present Fortress Press Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling Series (19 Vols.) as an incredible resource for those involved in ministerial care or counseling.

Although there are many fantastic Christian counseling resources available, this 19-volume collection is especially useful, giving you invaluable tools and guidance from pastors, psychologists, therapists, counselors, and other experienced caregivers. This massive source of counseling advice covers a myriad of concerns, such as how to care for the sick, the dying, marginalized people-groups, as well as those suffering from depression, abuse, and those in crisis.

A thoroughly practical resource, Fortress Press Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling Series contains outlines, discussions, and considerations on many methods of counseling and therapy perfect for pastors and counselors. The interaction between psychology and biblical doctrine is brought together in these titles, providing solid direction for the relational and counseling situations you find yourself in.

If you work with people on any level, this is an essential tool for you to learn how to minister to those around you in biblical and compassionate ways.

This is a follow up to an older post where I made reference to something going on in Exodus 18. My topic today is the practice of orienting participants to a situation. For instance, I could be introduced or “anchored” as “the Logos scholar-in-residence,” “Mike’s friend,” or “the owner of the white GMC truck.” All of these relations are accurate, but not all are relevant for a given context. It might be relevant at a crash scene that I own a white truck (but it wasn’t my fault), but not at the beginning of a Logos Lecture series, right? We use the most relevant anchoring expression for the given context. Most of the time, it is so routine that we don’t give it a second thought when we read or hear one. But there are places where this general rule is broken, and paying attention to anchoring expressions can have a huge impact on your Bible study.

While reading Exodus 18, I noticed that Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law is called father-in-law a lot, like almost twice as many times as he is called Jethro in the context. This is the story where Jethro teaches Moses about delegation following the exodus from Egypt. Why is he called father-in-law so often? Why not priest of Midian, since most commentators seem to think this is the more relevant anchoring expression? After all, this is a story of one priest teaching another priest about administration, right? This is true, but there is a bit more going on under the hood.

In all but one instance where Jethro is introduced in Exodus, he is anchored as “priest of Midian” (here is a link to the search in Logos 4). After Moses marries Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter, he is also anchored as Moses’ father-in-law (here is another search on the Hebrew lemma for father-in-law in Exodus). This means we have competing options available. One of the primary principles in my approach to discourse is this: “Choice implies meaning.” If I chose option A instead of option B, then there is some meaning to be gleaned from the choice. What is the meaning here? Let’s take a look at the opening details of the story.

If a biblical writer includes a detail in a story—e.g. that Esau was hairy, or that Sarai was beautiful, or that David was ruddy and handsome while Goliath was tall, dark and ugly—then chances are you need to know the tidbit to get the point of the story. We have a few such details like this in Exodus 18, ones that are often overlooked.

The first important detail is the location. Moses has returned to the same place where the Lord had appeared to him in the burning bush, just as the Lord had announced in Exodus 3:12. This is the same place where Moses had been herding sheep for Jethro (his father-in-law, remember?), probably fairly near Jethro’s encampment. Detail One: after the exodus, Moses has returned to the very place he started, his old stomping grounds where he had herded for Jethro.

The second important detail is found in Exodus 18:2, where we learn that Jethro (Moses’ father-in-law, remember?) is coming to see Moses, and is bringing along Zipporah, Moses’ wife and their two boys After he had sent her away. Say what? When did Moses send Zipporah away? No matter how good the Logos 4 search engine is, you will not find reference to Moses sending Zipporah away in the OT, it ain’t there, this is the only mention of it. So why mention it here? Remember, if its there its important, right? We must need to know it to get the point of the story.

Let’s recap a bit so we can pull all these details together. The Lord has used Moses to deliver Israel from the Egyptians, and they have all returned to where Moses was first called by the Lord. Next, Moses has sent Zipporah and his sons away at some point before the trip. Even though Moses and Israel have been camping on Jethro’s back 40 acres, so to speak, Moses hasn’t taken the time to send for his wife and kids. Why not? What could be preventing him from doing so? Let’s keep reading.

After Jethro (Moses’ father-in-law, remember?) arrives with Moses’ wife and kids (whom he’d sent away, remember?), he takes the time to re-establish rapport with Moses. He listens to all that the Lord has done for Moses and Israel (see Exodus 18:8, even though v. 1 makes it clear that he had already heard these things through the grapevine. Have you ever (re)listened to old news from someone just because you knew it was important to them? This seems to be what Jethro was doing, as a good father-in-law. Then they enjoy fellowship together along with Aaron and the elders, sharing a sacrifice together.Finally, Jethro (Moses’ father-in-law, remember?) goes to work with Moses the next day, and oh what a sight it must have been. Verse 13 tells us that the people stood around from morning to evening waiting to have their disputes resolved. What does Jethro do (Moses’ father-in-law, remember?) He watches patiently. Then at some point he asks the same kind of “What are you doing?” question that my dad used to ask me when he saw me doing something the hard way. “What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand around you from morning till evening?” (Exo. 18:14, ESV). It is one of those questions that is not so much for Jethro’s benefit as for Moses’. It requires him to look at things from a different perspective. And like a good father-in-law, Jethro highlights key details: Moses is doing it alone, and the people are standing around from morning to evening.

So why is Jethro called Moses’ father-in-law so many times? Why is this anchoring expression more relevant priest of Midian, even though most commentators stress the priest role? It is to counter the very thing that the commentators focus on. Even though Jethro could have used his authority as priest to tell Moses to do things differently, he doesn’t. Instead, the writer anchors him as father-in-law.

Stated differently, Jethro brings his daughter and his two grandsons to his son-in-law. Why bring them? Apparently because even though Moses had been so near for months, he had not taken the time to send for them. Why? Perhaps it had something to do with his day job consuming too much of his time. So what’s needed? To get Moses to change how he does things so that doesn’t wear out himself or the people (18:17-18). How does Jethro bring about the change? By coming as a father-in-law (who may have wanted to box the ears of the guy who didn’t have time for his daughter!) who took the time to reestablish rapport (vv. 6-12), who hung out with Moses enough that the latter knew he understood the problem (vv. 13-16). Then instead of shoving the solution down his throat on the basis of his authority as priest or father-in-law, he offers it up for Moses’ consideration (v. 19-23).

Did you think of Paul’s letter to the Romans when you read the title to this post? Chances are you did, but that’s not the letter I was thinking of.
Did you know that there was at least one other letter written to the Romans in the early Christian age? The martyr Ignatius, on his way as a prisoner to face the beasts in Rome, wrote a letter to the Romans to prepare them for his arrival.
He likely wrote it on August 24. In its closing, the letter dates itself as being written on “the ninth day before the kalends of September”, which is probably best converted to August 24 on our present calendar.
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas, and some others) are the closest both in time and genre to the New Testament. As such they are incredibly important when considering the New Testament. Why? For a number of reasons, really:

They are written by those who claimed Christ, and as such help us understand how they interpreted the OT and the still-being-formed New Testament.

They refer to the Old Testament (LXX, primarily) and cite it; some cite the New Testament. Others (e.g. 2 Clement) even mention or allude to non-canonical post-NT writings. These all help us understand how the early Christ-followers themselves used Scripture and other writings.

They are in Greek, so they provide lexical and grammatical help for us in our reading of the New Testament.

As you examine commentaries, lexicons, and grammars on the New Testament, you’ve probably seen references to these writings. Once you start to pay attention to them, you see them everywhere. BDAG. BDF. ICC New Testament. Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary and Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries (NT). WBC. The list goes on. If these help us understand the NT, they’re important for us to pay attention to in our studies.At Logos, we have a few resources available as Pre-Pubs that will help these writings play a greater role in your studies:

Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the Apostolic Fathers — This is a complete syntactic analysis of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers (extant in Greek). It will include graphs that visually display the above-the-word-level connections and components. Using this layout can help one understand these higher-level structures, and make reading and understanding the text easier. This is less about searching to find grammatical patterns (though that is important) and more about using these graphs to understand how the Greek text hangs together. It’s to help your reading of these texts.

Today’s guest post is by Kyle Anderson, from the Logos Bible Software electronic text development team.

My Mom is in a book club. During the discussion of their current book, questions were raised about John Calvin and specific points of his theology. After a bit of hemming and hawing, my Mom offered to send an email to her son—the closest person any of them knew to being a theology expert—asking for some background on Calvin. More than that, they wanted to know what Calvin thought about God.

Intuitively they knew that throughout history there have been giants of theology. These are people who have had the uncanny gift of deeply reflecting about God’s nature and communicating it a way that strikes a chord in both the Church and the greater world. People like Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, and Barth.

Penetrating the depths of their thought helps us dig deeper into the unfathomable vast riches of God. Spending time with these people lets us stand on the shoulders of giants and scan the horizons of who we understand God to be.

Of course, the question is, how do we begin probing the minds of these thinkers? The best way is to jump right in and explore. My theology professor in college reminded us often that the best way to understand Karl Barth was to actually read Karl Barth. But we all need a little help. And I present to you Donald Bloesch’s Christian Foundation Collection.

In this 7-volume collection Bloesch traverses the standard topics of systematic theology but does so with a keen eye on both the biblical witness and centuries of Christian thought. As a reader you’re presented with various summary positions and quotations from representative thinkers. Pick up Donald Bloesch’s Christian Foundation Collection and begin to immerse yourself in the Church’s great thoughts and thinkers.

Update: We just learned that Donald Bloesch passed away on August 24, 2010. Here are a couple of nice obituaries:

I used to walk into old bookstores and see a Michelangelo or El Greco book and have to have it. It started with old cheap books, but it quickly got out of control. Before I knew it, Barnes and Noble and Borders had me. I was walking out with expensive books about Da Vinci. Then Amazon.com got me with sweet folios of art pieces by people like William Blake. There was something soothing about having coffee with a brightly colored book that combined text and art—two great mediums together. The combining of mediums is also what I love about magazines, hence the need for Bible Study Magazine 2008–2009. But with this book, you get art and writing focused on God’s Word. It’s an extraordinary conversational piece for your living room.

Why My Grandfather-in-Law Loves Coffee Table Books

I’m not the only one who loves big books. I recently took my grandfather-in-law into Barnes and Noble. He left with a big book on military planes, and almost bought one on trains. He loves coffee-table books for the same reason I do: They take everything we love about a subject, condense it, and throw it in a blender with art. So I asked my grandfather-in-law, “What do you think about a coffee table book about Bible study?” He got a big smirk on his face and said, “That would be perfect. Can I buy one here?” The answer was no, because to my knowledge Bible Study Magazine 2008–2009 is the only coffee table book solely about Bible study, and it’s not in Barnes and Noble.

You Will Love This Coffee Table Book

This compilation presents the wealth of an entire year’s worth of Bible studies, do-it-yourself guides, tips, and interviews with trusted pastors and teachers of Scripture. It includes book reviews, ideas for devotions, word studies, biblical humor, and archaeological and historical insights. Plus, Bible Study Magazine 2008–2009 contains the sold-out, highly requested January–February 2009 issue, featuring an interview with Kay Arthur. Other people interviewed include Josh McDowell, Mark Driscoll, Randy Alcorn, Lee Strobel, John Piper, John MacArthur, and more. Bible Study Magazine 2008–2009 is perfect for display as well as for study and examination of God’s Word. Order it today by clicking here!

My primary current interest is a thorough, in-depth study of the Greek preposition “pros” (w/accusative). Since it has so many different possible meanings, how do I go about searching the various LXX and NT occurrences – and other available resources – to see what range of alternative meanings might fit in various contexts?

You’ll be very happy to know this type of in-depth original language study is quite easy with Logos Bible Software 4. Here’s one way to tackle this study:

Choose Guides | Bible Word Study

When the guide opens type this exact text in the Word box: g:pros (the g: alerts Logos that what follows is a transliteration of a Greek word)

After typing the text you’ll see a drop down list of Greek words from which you can select the Greek preposition p???

Click the Go arrow in the Word box or press the Enter key to generate the report

The report contains numerous sections including:

Translation displaying all the occurrences of this Greek word regardless of how it’s translated in the English Bible

Septuagint Translation showing all the occurrences in the LXX

Grammatical Relationships listing the words and cases used with this preposition including the accusative about which our Logos user originally inquired!

The Interpretation commentaries and the New Daily Study Bible, by William Barclay, are among our most-requested books. We regularly get calls and emails from our users who want to add them to their libraries, and if you’re a regular in the Forums, you know that posts appear every few weeks asking about them.

If you’re one of the countless Logos users who have sent in requests, we have good news for you! We’ve been working on a new partnership with Westminster John Knox Press, and we’re pleased to announce that Interpretation and the New Daily Study Bible are now on Pre-Pub!

Both of these commentary series regularly appear on lists of must-have commentaries for pastors and students of the Bible. The New Daily Study Bible is written by world-renowned Bible scholar William Barclay. He wrote more than fifty books, but he is best remembered for his series of commentaries.

As much as I like reading, there is just something about video that goes way beyond text alone. Even better is to see and hear an author teaching what they are passionate about. It is a great complement to just reading their book. This is exactly the kind of experience you’ll get from the Introducing New Testament Discourse Grammar: Video Series.

Using everything from road signs and jokes to funny English translations, I show how we use discourse grammar every day. Why do we say things like “Here’s the deal” or “Guess what?” For that matter, how would we even go about understanding how they work? This is where discourse grammar comes in.

Introducing New Testament Discourse Grammar: Video Series explains the principles you need to understand not just how these devices work in English, but also how to apply them to your exposition of the Greek text. Discourse grammar is not just about exegesis, it is about communication. Understanding how these things work not only sharpens your exegesis, it also enhances your ability to communicate what you’ve learned. I show you how you can use English equivalents of discourse device to achieve the same kind of effect that Paul or Luke achieved in the Greek.

This video series will help reinvigorate your use of Greek. You will learn what each different device does in a passage and how to synthesize the pieces into a unified whole. Each concept is explained beginning with everyday English usage, then illustrated from NT passages. If you already have the Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament, you’ll find fresh new examples and explanations that are only possible on video.

There are several excerpts from the video series for you to see what it has to offer. You will not find a more accessible or practical introduction to discourse grammar than these videos, so order today.

This is the third in a series of three posts called “Syntax Searching for Everyone”. In this video, we’ll peek at Syntax Search Templates.
What is a Syntax Search Template? Well, if you watched the video on Query Forms from the previous post in this series, you already know what a Syntax Search Template is. The template is the query that underlies the Query Form, just opened up in the syntax search document editor. From here you can better understand how queries are put together and modify them for your own use.
The video shows you how.

[Note: The Syntax Search Template feature is only available to users who have the Andersen-Forbes Hebrew Syntactic Analysis, the OpenText.org Greek NT Syntactic Analysis, and the Cascadia Syntax Graphs of the New Testament. The Andersen-Forbes and OpenText.org databases are in the Logos 4 Original Languages (LE) package and above; Cascadia is in the Logos 4 Scholar’s Silver (LE) package and above.]

I love discovering the history behind the books I read. If you’re anything like me, you may feel the same way—knowing the background of a resource can provide intrigue, context, and clarity.

The story behind the Cambridge University Press is of particular fascination. The world’s oldest printing press published its first book in 1584, and is still operational today. Cambridge has survived the growth and evolution of the publication world, as well as two world wars and over four centuries of change. They have published hundreds of thousands of books, including many theological materials and Bibles that have been used worldwide.

The fifty-seven individual volumes contained in The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges—the first ever complete commentary set to be printed by Cambridge University Press—were published between 1884 and 1922, each containing valuable commentative insight and verse-by-verse exegesis from much-loved theologians such as Alfred Plummer, Herbert Edward Ryle, S. R. Driver, and many others. This significant collection provides a holistic look at the entire Bible, meticulously examining each Old and New Testament book.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges, the second Cambridge University Press collection now available for pre-order from Logos, includes the entire New Testament in Greek. Written around the same time as The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, it holds writings from some of the same respected theologians and is a fantastic compilation of New Testament commentary. These twenty-one volumes are the perfect addition to any Greek scholar’s library.

The year 1591, only seven years after Cambridge University Press was established, saw the printing of Cambridge’s first Bible, setting a precedent for quality biblical literature. Now, hundreds of years later, Logos is pleased to carry timeless offerings of this historic press, brimming with outstanding scholarship in digital format for ease of study. You won’t be sorry you invested in these powerful volumes, especially with our current Pre-Pub pricing.

Here are a few of our other collections containing books from Cambridge University Press: